


Beholden

by emmerwrites



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emet-Selch erring gravely, Existential Angst, Fate & Destiny, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Gen, Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Multi, Past Lives, Survivor Guilt, and then again, but with a big twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25140787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmerwrites/pseuds/emmerwrites
Summary: "The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world."A story in which the villain accidentally-on-purpose saves the life of the hero, and seals both of their fates together.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch & Warrior of Light, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This features my (alt) OC Rhodry Vance, my canon WoL's brother who was "lost" in the Calamity. This is his own WoL AU.
> 
> His rather extraordinary circumstances fit in so unbelievably well with the events of Shadowbringers that I kind of had no choice but to tell this story about him and Emet-Selch and their wacky, woeful web of destiny. The POV swaps back and forth between the two multiple times, and I have left certain things intentionally ambiguous, which I hope is a fun mystery and not confusing.

Lahabrea watches Carteneau burn from on high. Armies fall, and soon the great wyrm will wreak its destruction upon the land below. Lahabrea is pleased. Another successful Calamity well underway.

Another Ascian observes the battlefield with a notably different disposition.

It’s Emet-Selch, and he’s furious. He’s not supposed to be here, but _something_ pulled his attention, pulled him away from playing emperor. All for the glory of Zodiark, in the end, but this really _isn’t_ his affair. He’s impatient and angry and maybe even a little scared.

He’s not supposed to be here. Has has no business here.

Yet–

That color, that scent, that _presence_ – it’s unmistakable. distracting. aggravating in the way it plucks some lone string of hope deep within him. He’d know that soul anywhere, despite changed flesh and bone, even when wrapped in a body he doesn’t recognize. It’s a man–no, a boy, really–a boy dressed in a medicus’ clothes, covered in the blood of his comrades, and pounding desperately at Hydaelyn’s door.

He’s not supposed to be here. Neither of them are.

_This is all wrong,_ something inside Emet-Selch panics, _You aren’t supposed to die here._

The Ascian is furious but nevertheless relieved. At least he is there to fix this coincidence, this cosmic mistake. At least he is there to seize him back, to grab hold of the boy in the same mortal instant he falls.

-

Emet-Selch has never saved anybody from drowning before, but wonders if this is what it feels like. From the shore, he reaches and grabs hold of the body that’s not a body, of the soul that’s not quite the one he knows.

_Just a shard_ , he reminds himself, _a splinter_. A reflection fragile but dense. The tide recedes and leaves them on the bank of the river, the Ascian and the boy with the familiar-yet-unfamiliar face. He conjures back his soldiers’ clothes, now washed clean of blood and soil, and considers, only briefly, the weight of his life in his hands: soft and warm and young, only a fledgling with feathers too wet to fly.

Tiny. Insignificant. Pitiful.

Seven-times rejoined, now, and still little more than a shade. An echo. He does not know this boy’s name, but he convinces himself he does not care to know. Whatever it is, it is not the name he knew before.

_Foolishness_ , the Ascian decides, half in admonishment of himself, and without a looking back, he leaves the boy to be found upon the shore of the aetherial sea.

-

Lahabrea is no more, and though he has an eternity, Emet-Selch has no time to mourn him. When the tale of his demise reaches him he is instead overcome with violent, hysterical laughter.

It was _him_. Of course it was. It was that foolish boy, now a man, the one who carried with him a fragment of something more. The one who went to Carteneau by shadows-know what folly, whose life he saved. It was the one whose soul he grasped back from the Lifestream with his bare hands-- _oh,_ that he should turn out to be the so-called _Warrior of Light!_

The irony is physically painful. The Ascian laughs until there are tears streaming from his eyes, until he is shaking. _Hydaelyn’s Champion_ , they’re calling him. _Bringer of Light_ , they say. 

An interesting development, but of no concern. He stands no chance. What once was extraordinary is no longer content to hide in its brokenness, and all that’s left of that broken shell stands against him – _unknowingly!_ – again.

Emet-Selch wishes him luck, and returns to his work, stifling the pain of how abhorrently perfect it is that he would be beholden to _Her_.

-

The boy’s name is Rhodry, and he’s a menace.

Emet-Selch chooses the word almost affectionately, like one might refer to a disobedient dog. Troublemaker. Extreme inconvenience. A thorn in his side.

He’s grown into the title of Warrior of Light quite impressively, all things considered, but no matter his bravery, his intelligence, his magical prowess, or even his damned _blessing_ , he is little more than a child. Twenty-something summers old by Source-reckoning, a blink of time and so unaware of all that exists before and beyond him.

He is, nonetheless, intriguing, at least as far as mortals go. He’s soft, but there is a chaos in him that never quite reaches the surface. The Ascian cannot help but wonder what that chaos will look like when it does. He also cannot help but wonder if this foolish little crusade across Norvrandt might provide some kind of benefit to the Rejoining, after all.

_Not a distraction_ , he convinces himself. Merely an amusing detour, an entertaining situation to watch unfold. He will observe and do naught more. When the time comes he will judge his worthiness, and perhaps letting him live will be a boon to his cause. Perhaps saving his life will not have been a mistake.

Emet-Selch watches and waits and tries to keep his distance.

-

Another Lightwarden slain, and Emet-Selch is deeply vexed. Rhodry is _incorrigible_. He is curious. Pestering, but genuine, earnest, deeply yearning for knowledge. He is _always_ asking questions.

It’s… endearing. It’s familiar. The more time he spends in and out of the shadows of the now-called Warrior of Darkness, the more he feels like he’s sinking. His mind wanders too frequently into the past to make idle and ultimately futile comparisons. 

Wasteful. Wretched. _Wrong._

He is _not_ who he was.

...but he has potential, and a debt to be paid.

-

For years, Rhodry has had dreams of a creature watching him. He isn’t sure what it looks like, or even if it looks the same every time– it’s an intangible thing, lurking in the periphery. It’s not necessarily menacing, but it is not comforting either. It’s fleeting and barely noticeable. Maybe it’s nothing at all, but whatever it is, it has yellow eyes.

It takes Rhodry over a decade to learn that those eyes belong to the worst creature imaginable: an Ascian. An Ascian masquerading as a _Garlean_. Of all the horrific beasts and despicable, _twisted_ foes he has encountered, this is the worst combination he can think of.

He wonders if it can get any worse.

In Rak’tika, he learns that it can.

-

“Don’t look so glum, hero,” Emet-Selch says, “I thought you would be happy to have your friend back alive and well.”

“Why should you care if i’m happy or not?” Rhodry’s head is aching. His stomach is roiling and his heart is breaking and he has no idea why. This isn’t the light burning inside him, it’s something _else_ that is trying to break out of his skin. 

“How does that aid your grand scheme?” He demands. “You said it yourself that I’m barely an _insect._ ”

The Ascian is momentarily speechless, and Rhodry counts it as a victory. He keeps walking.

“You’re not like the others,” comes the eventual reply from behind him.

When Rhodry turns around he is alone.

-

Rhodry isn’t sure what to blame it on when he finally snaps. He has never had much of a temper, but he swears this Lightwarden business has made his emotions more volatile.

“It would be wise of you to mind your manners, _boy_ ,” the Ascian sneers. He’s half a fulm away. Rhodry has a fist in the front of his robes. What the hells is he _doing?_

“Or what?” he counters quietly. Several voices in his head fight for dominance while the silence around them is deafening.

_He’s an Ascian but he’s just a man. He has a mortal body just like yours, just like anyone’s. You can stop his heart. You can take the air from his lungs and watch him drown._

_You can punch him in the fucking jaw._

Emet-Selch’s voice is infuriatingly calm, eyebrows tilted in derision. “Is this how you want your story to end? Fisticuffs in the forest? Need I remind you I was a legatus long before I was an emperor.”

“Never cared for Garlean history,” Rhodry replies with a blank sneer, “How many thousands of years ago was that, _Your Radiance?”_

A white gloved hand wraps around Rhodry’s wrist.

_You idiot,_ he admonishes himself, Y _ou flaming nitwit. He’s an Ascian. If you kill Solus he’ll find someone else._

“What is it you want, exactly?” the Ascian inquires, completely unflapped. “If it’s simply my attention you want I promise you needn’t resort to such barbaric conversation starters.”

Rhodry lets him go with a huff and backs several paces away, rubbing his wrist. He feels foolish and tired and unpredictable.

Emet-Selch readjusts his sash and jacket, regarding his would-be assailant with something between amusement and pity.

“Poor thing,” he sighs, “You really are feeling the strain now, aren’t you? Get some rest. There will be plenty of time for a heart to heart chat after you’ve had a full night of sleep.”

He leaves through a tear in the Void, and that night, Rhodry dreams of Carteneau.

-

Rhodry whistles.

“Emet-Selch,” he nearly shouts, though his voice is swallowed by the rain, “I know you’re here.”

Thunder booms.

“Not so _loudly_ ,” the Ascian’s voice is immediately and uncomfortably close. Whispers of darkness cling to his every edge as if he has emerged dripping from a pool of ink. “And of course I am here. Did I not promise as much?”

“That was quick. You must be really bored,” Rhodry says flatly.

Golden eyes narrow.

“Or waiting,” he amends. His heart is racing, he feels ready to jump out if his skin, through the window, the door, _anything_ to get out of this room–

And yet.

“Yes, my dear hero, you are quite right,” the Ascian sighs. Something in his voice is different. Chilling. Ancient. “I have been waiting for a very, _very_ long time.”

Rhodry stares unflinchingly ahead, blood and aether burning and singing.

“Well,” he finally says, “Here I am.”

It’s meant as a challenge and the Ascian can tell. His lip quirks as if he might smile, but he doesn’t.

In his lupine stare, the dream returns. Dalamud falls and fire rains. Rhodry is struggling to breathe. He watches himself from afar, watches himself fall far below the limits of the ground--he watches himself bleed and bleed into the very blood of the planet. He drowns in light–

–and breathes again, seized by a golden-eyed shadow with claws that snag in his hair.

The vision passes in an instant, as they always have, and Rhodry finds his voice.

“Why?” that one word, one sound, rang bitterly like a bell against the open window’s curtain of rain. He grit his teeth and continued: “Why did you save me?”

“So you _do_ know, then? Something your precious Mother showed you, perhaps?”

Flippant. A suggestion of relief.

“Good,” he continues, “I must admit I have been agonizing over how to broach the subject–”

_“Why me?”_ Rhodry cuts him off with a question he knows is a plea– it’s a plea and it’s _angry._ “Why me, my life of all of those lives, all of those–those _people_ who died in my hands, _in front of me_ –why was I so different? Why was I so deserving of your damned _intervention?_ ”

Emet-Selch takes a moment before attempting to reply, but he has shown his hand in the change of his expression.

_“Deserving._ ” He repeats darkly, “If only you understood what it is you deserve.”

Rhodry isn’t sure if it’s exhaustion or illusion, but his dark visitor is suddenly and quite noticeably _taller_. He nearly towers above him, sweeping close beside him as if to tell him secrets in his ear.

“I could give it to you, you know,” the shadow murmurs. The sound is haunting, his breath is cold. “Just as you could give it to me. Just as you _owe_ it to me.“

Rather than recoil, Rhodry struggles not to lean closer to whisper his defiance: “I don’t owe you _shit,_ old man.”

The room darkens. The quiet is dispelled by the hiss of a serpent and the crack of a whip: “You owe me your _life_.”

_What is my life worth to you?_ He wonders, but remains quiet while darkness snarls and nips at his ankles. Aether coils around him like ropes, only as tightly as a threat not fully-voiced.

“You have a debt to pay,” Emet-Selch speaks from beyond Rhodry’s periphery, in his ear and in his mind.

"And how would you have me repay it?” He asks. A chuckle, nigh-inaudible, and the bindings dissipate. The visage of Solus appears before him once more, back to his usual slouch.

“That entirely depends on whether or not this little quest of yours succeeds,” he answers with a characteristically cryptic smirk. “Slay the remaining Lightwarden, and all shall become clear. You have my word.”

Later, long after Rhodry is alone again, he stares at the ceiling and ponders the worth of an Ascian’s word. He has barely slept a wink before dawn beckons him back to Kholusia.

-

_Tell us why, given Life, we are meant to die, helpless in our cries?_

-

_“Why did you save me?”_ The question rings and rings and rings in his memory as if the boy is following him around like a little bird. A nagging, guilty little bird. He still doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand–but could he ever? How can the mortal intellect begin to grasp the profundity of his circumstances?

Emet-Selch slips and slithers. He evades. He refuses to answer the question of destiny, if he knew all of this was going to happen–

Well, of course not. If he had, he would not have wasted such a colossal amount of time and effort. He would not, in this moment, be so devastatingly disappointed.

Rhodry’s body is well enough intact, but his aether is an absolute disgrace of Light. Twisted, creaking, bleeding limbs take shape beyond his physical limits and the marble beneath him cracks as if broken apart by invisible roots seeking the mountain below.

Emet-selch is furious. This one was supposed to be better. This one was supposed to–

A bloodied and shaking hand seizes the front of his robes.

“Please,” the hero rasps, “Help me.”

Unexpected. Unconscionable. Unseemly.

As if craving torture, the Ascian grabs the boy’s chin to look him in the eyes for something familiar. The eyes that look back at him are the color of earth instead of the ocean, but it doesn’t stop him from seeing that _blue–_

Blessed, relieving cruelty returns to his heart and quells the war in the very edges of his mind. Physical connection is severed.

“I’m afraid not,” he says, smooth as poison.

His glove is stained by blinding white blood.

“You’re on your own now, my dear boy.”–not the epithet he intended. _Call him what he is, by Zodiark, he’s nothing! He’s halfway a monster and no more than a facsimile, a fragment–_

Dreaming and awake he hears the question again in the hero’s desperate, breaking voice:

_“Why did you save me just to let me die here?”_

For the first time in a millennia, Emet-Selch is truly speechless.

-

The locks of white in Rhodry’s hair have grown, and he sorely hopes nobody chooses to comment on them. The rest of the evidence is either invisible or hidden: slightly impaired vision, piercing headaches, tiny bright veins raised in his skin.

He tries to take Feo Ul’s advice. He tries to take Ardbert’s advice. He tries to accept the devotion of his friends in place of despair, and for the most part, he is successful. He carries on. He ponders a way forward, a way to find G’raha, a way to fix what he had broken.

All the while he suffers the peculiar pain of what he is ashamed only to be able to call _abandonment._

Here the Warrior of Darkness sits, half a sineater in disguise, pining for the attention of his enemy.

He can’t even laugh at himself. He feels completely absurd, but his confusion mocks him.

_Are you a coward, or a liar, Emet-Selch?_ He wonders under the blinding midnight. After all, he knows he apparently failed to uphold his end of the bargain he never chose to make. 

_If my life is what’s owed, why haven’t you just taken it?_

Maybe he is neither a coward nor a liar. Maybe he’s just evil.

He’s just an Ascian, and Ascians all want the same thing.

And yet…

Y’shtola gives him a shrewd look when he asks her about Tempering.

“No,” she answers confidently. “Nothing but death can free a soul from the influence of a Primal.”

“After death, though, is the soul free?”

He pale eyes narrow and she smiles a bit fondly.

“Perhaps in the poetic sense,” she muses with a smirk. Rhodry doesn’t know what sort of face he’s making but it inspires a comforting hand in his hair.

“That being said,” she continues in a gentler tone, “I know of no evidence to the contrary. Perhaps such a thing _is_ possible. Perhaps one may swim in the Lifestream and be cleansed.”

Rhodry remembers the prisoners of Ifrit, the violet Sylphs, even the Heaven’s Ward–he wonders if any of them could return with their wills untainted.

He wonders if one miracle could be compounded by another.

“Though _here_ we reach the edge of my understanding,” Y'shtola says with an impish ruefulness, “For twice now have I been the fish, but never the angler.”

Rhodry joins her in a smile, a fish of another color, with scales stained blinding white. He knows he is not Tempered, nor was he before that fateful swim of his own. He is not Tempered but his mind is consumed by the need for another swim, this time to the bottom of the sea.

-

Emet-Selch is beholden to Zodiark: beholden to the pursuit of chaos and Ardor. Calamity. Rejoining. He wants, above all, to restore his god to power.

He’s an Ascian. He merely wants what all Ascians want, but now Rhodry knows _why._

He knows because the lamps are lit in Amaurot, and he knows because he feels a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with the Light. The glittering phantasm both breaks and builds something in his mind just out of reach, something powerful and _howling_ to be set free.

Alisaie takes his hand. Her voice sounds paradoxically far away.

“You feeling alright?”

“Don’t know,” he manages to answer, but his eyes burn because now he knows, _he knows_.

-

_Thy Life is a riddle, to bear rapture and sorrow_

_T_ _o listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow--_

-

Rhodry watches the end of the world and remembers it as if it were yesterday. The nameless shades that scream in terror all around him are soldiers and volunteers: the vacant, birdlike masks they wear are helmets and Imperial visors.

_“The lands buckled, the cities burned, the waters ran red with blood–”_

Dalamud is a fell beacon hanging by a thread.

Ryne’s voice is a beacon of another kind: “Stay with us!”

Nightmarish fiends bar the way, twisted horrors born of the imagination. It’s millions of years before magitek but he can still hear the scream and scrape of metal.

_“Just a little further…”_

He shakes himself free of the din and presses on. The road stretches deep and winding through desolation that shakes and shatters beneath his feet, all too familiar.

Familiar but this time is different: he is not alone.

Yet even among his dearest companions Rhodry struggles against the leaden pull of despair, for never has he remembered death so clearly.

-

At the end of the road, they remove all titles and pretense.

Hades holds nothing back: his anguish is unfathomable and his power immeasurable. He closes his eyes to the treachery of memory and seethes with the dark power of eons, of millions of lives lost that he would restore, the power of a _god_.

The boy stands against him, defiant, arrogant, a fool. He is nothing. He is mortal: unchanging, unenlightened, unforgivable. His soul is in pieces, and it matters not that it was once whole.

Even if he _could_ remember, which he could not–he is broken and cannot be saved.

He is not what he was. His light must be extinguished. The mistake must be undone and erased. He must destroy him even if only to correct his own folly–

In his enormity Hades considers simply crushing the hero between his fingers, breaking his tiny, feeble body like one would kill an insect–

But in the end he would have him drown: a fitting end, an error reversed.

_“Why did you save me?”_

The shadows deepen.

_Why did I save him?_

He can still hear it, _that damned question_ pulling at all of his threads. But it is too late now, he can no longer hear the answer–all he can hear is the voice of the dark.

Hades refuses to yield, even when destiny and coincidence unite against him. He refuses to yield to the conviction of the flame he rekindled on a reckless whim.

He refuses to yield even as his multitudes are confined and shattered into silence.

-

“What are you _doing_ , hero?”

Solus. Emet-Selch. _Hades._ Whoever’s voice it truly is, it sounds tired and irritable. Familiar.

Rhodry does not answer his question. He can barely speak through his shaking. He is channeling his aether more desperately than he has in years, nearing the point of collapse, hand bloodied and burning against the gleaming wound in the Ascian’s chest. For somebody so tall, his body feels mysteriously light, almost as if the heavy black robes are all that is weighing him down, keeping him in one piece.

There is a disgruntled wheeze and a clawed grasp at his wrist. 

Quietly: “You are only hurting yourself.”

“Shut up,” Rhodry says through gritted teeth.

The Ascian, the Architect, the twelves-damned Emperor of Garlemald himself-- _laughs_. It’s derisive but fond and far softer, somehow.

This is a wound that cannot heal, but Rhodry can’t stop, not yet.

“I’m going to save you,” he rasps, swallowing hard, vision blurring, “Like you saved me.”

Emet-Selch does not ask him why. He merely smiles a wan and peculiar smile.

And there–

There is a moment, almost imperceptible, a moment of acute nostalgia–of _recognition_. In that fleeting moment, quick and intangible as the aether bleeding through his fingers, he could swear that something in that pale, golden-eyed face is _changed._

Changed, but same as always.

“Remember us,” he says.

Rhodry’s lungs constrict.

“Remember that we once lived.”

That the keeper and carrier of his peoples’ legacy would see it carried in the very hands that brought him low–-hands that tremble and ache under the weight of unseen burden--

Hands that strain beneath all of those that could not be saved.

With another strange and tired smile, the creature ever watching from the shadows loosens his grip: 

“With that, your debt is repaid.”

The claws fall away, the serpent uncoils. It’s as if all of his aether simply relaxes into weightlessness. No longer bleeding, but dissipating, he lets go.

Rhodry lets go of his own breath.

Emet-Selch vanishes as the sun rises over the ruins, and for a moment, before he hears the voices of his friends, Rhodry is alone.

He is, perhaps, more alone than he has ever been, than he can ever remember being. He is exhausted and _empty_ , heavier with a weight he cannot describe.

But despite everything, he is very much alive, and for this he is finally thankful--free of guilt, and free of questioning.

_“He was the shadow to your light.”_

He finally knows the answer.

No longer beholden to shadow, he is now beholden only to his word.

-

_In one fleeting moment, from the Land doth life flow_

_Yet in one fleeting moment, for anew it doth grow_

_In the same fleeting moment thou must live, die and know._

_-_


	2. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the inevitable addendum, but not quite denouement. 5.3 spoilers.

Rhodry had been asking _“why me”_ his entire life and collected a myriad of answers.

“Why you? Why _not_ you?”

Oddly enough, that was a response he never expected to hear.

“Had I chosen another, we would never have made it this far.”

Perhaps G’raha’s was as good an answer as he was likely to get at this point.

Emet-Selch had never answered him, after all, not directly--Rhodry thought he had come up with the answer himself some time ago but no longer found it satisfying. 

_“If only you understood what it is you deserve.”_

Apparently, he deserved the great honor of putting an end to Elidibus. Apparently, it was destiny, fate. Fated to clash. Fated to fight. Fated to stand opposed to madness that had grown from hope.

Again.

_At times you will stand with us. At times you will stand against us. All that you might steer mankind and the very star upon their true course._

Rhodry was not steering anything, not alone. G’raha was busy fighting in the tower below (so he hoped) and could not summon his friends to his side as he had once before. And yet, all around him shone beacons, and a voice, familiar and unfamiliar, echoed in his mind.

_Herein do I commit the chronicle of the traveler--_

Hythlodaeus said-- 

_\--the magick to summon the stars to your side._

If anyone were to ask him how or what he did, he would be unable to answer. He only hoped that if he had indeed just summoned the stars, that he would remember to tease Urianger about being the better astrologian.

Once this was all over. 

And for a moment, Rhodry was fairly certain it _was_ over. He felt his edges begin to fray and crumple under the weight of the shadows, while the fiery orange stone burned in his hand. Whatever magicks lived within it were not likely to bring about a second miracle in the same day.

Yet he hoped, even as the stars blinked out one by one until there was nobody left to answer his summons.

Save for one, it seemed.

Even then, he could feel the inherent denial that intervention was anything but a self-serving convenience. He could feel it like a derisive sigh that hid a smile in spite of itself, in the sharp tug at his back that seemed to pull a thorny, crimson thread from inside his chest. 

_Oh,_ he thought vaguely with the consciousness he still clung to, _You._

The answer: _“Who else?”_

_**Snap.** _

Rhodry’s eyes were open again. He felt the warm surface of Azem’s stone still in his hand, smooth yet inscribed with thousands of words he couldn’t read or hear. In a fleeting moment everything seemed to fall into place.

_Did you know this was going to happen?_ he still wondered.

_“Stop asking stupid questions.”_

Rhodry shook his head, realizing with a wry smile that was all the answer he needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like so many of us, I did indeed lose my mind (and shed a tear) at that Seat of Sacrifice phase change. I play through everything with Alyx first, but even while in the second half of the trial that first time all I could think was "wow I can't believe he just saved Rhodry's life AGAIN"

**Author's Note:**

> I truly hope this is a satisfying read (or reread) in its entirety. Let me know what you think! Thank you <3


End file.
